Victory Parade
This one features my new podcast w/Leela Corman, my scattered thoughts on Ed Piskor's death & online mobs, a hint of art, and a hint of a book project.
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 583 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. Leela Corman as we celebrate her breathtaking new graphic novel, VICTORY PARADE (Schocken Books)! We talk about how the book brings together the women welders of WWII-era Brooklyn Navy Yards, professional wrestling, and her lifelong obsession with the Shoah, how discovering her watercolor style was like the portal between life and death opening, her life-defining visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the art school experience that derailed her. We get into the sacred responsibility of teaching, why she brought characters from her earlier GN Unterzakhn into Victory Parade, her twin literary polestars of Primo Levi & Lisa Carver, and her music-comics collaboration with Thalia Zedek. Plus we discuss the Gen X practice of warts-and-all autobio comics, transgenerational trauma and the next book in her ‘Birnbaumiad’ triptych, the revelation of Neko Case’s music, and a lot more. Give it a listen, and go read VICTORY PARADE
Last week, I posted Episode 582 of The Virtual Memories Show, with Keith Mayerson joining the show to talk about co-editing Frank Johnson: Secret Pioneer of American Comics, Vol. 1 (Fantagraphics), and his own multi-decade “wordless novel” in paintings, My American Dream (Karma). We get into how Frank Johnson made thousands of pages of comics in private, never published, and may have created the first American comic-book in history, whether he constitutes an Outsider Artist, how his creative legacy contrasts with Henry Darger‘s, and what it means to make a lifelong body of work with no sense or expectation of a readership. We also get into Keith’s My American Dream project, its roots in 9/11 & the GWBush era, how his paintings play off of each other like panels in a comic, his art-subject trinity of James Dean, Elvis, and Keanu Reeves (and his story of meeting Keanu), how My American Dream works to synthesize aspects of Warhol & Rembrandt (& Haring), the significance of the Muppets in his vision of America, and plenty more. Give it a listen, go read Frank Johnson: Secret Pioneer of American Comics, Vol. 1, and ogle My American Dream!
Recent episodes: Edith Hall • David Small • Brad Gooch • Japan, a monologue • Scott Guild • Aaron Lange • Donald J. Robertson • Elizabeth Flock
Grand Design
Ed Piskor lived online; he died in a hotel room.
He killed himself a few days ago, after a week-long stint as the subject of an Internet Pile-On. You can read what prompted it, and read his suicide note (PDF).
After the accusations and the Internet firestorm, Ed lost some professional opportunities: an exhibition of his work that was supposed to open this week, a book contract. According to a mutual pal who called me yesterday to talk about it, Ed “lived online”, and when the mob came after him, he couldn’t take it.
He spoke to Ed on Saturday, and told me that the last straw was a reporter showing up to question Ed’s elderly parents about the story. He left home for a hotel, talked to some people, wrote that note, and ended his life.
I can’t imagine being under that sort of pressure, suffering that degree of pariah-hood. A few of my past guests have been The Twitter Villain for a short time, but they were older men, not invested in living online, and moved on with their careers & their lives. This is just godawful.
But it’s a feature, not a bug, of this virtual world: we get to perform outrage and type things we could never say to another person’s face, shielded by our screens. We can hound someone to death, then post sad-face emojis when someone we’ve never met got the wrong coffee order.
Like the rest of this frictionless world, it’s too easy.
“Some good people reached out and tried to help me through this whole thing but I’m just not strong enough,” he wrote.
(I wasn’t one of them. I didn't know Ed, never really read his comics, only saw him at festivals in The Before Time. In the last few years, I’d see notices on social media of the comics podcast he co-hosted with Jim Rugg, Cartoonist Kayfabe, but I never checked it out.)
It has me thinking of my recent conversation with Edith Hall about suicide. She talked about how some of the Ancient Greek Tragedies provide a script to help talk to someone who is considering ending their life.
I have no idea whether the examples of Philoctetes or Heracles Mad would have helped bring him back from the edge, whether the rights responsibility argument — what we owe all the people whose lives we touch — could have kept him from suicide.
I’m glad our pal called him, that others did, too, to let him know he wasn’t alone, no matter how bad the online mob got.
I don’t know what else to say, but Our Mutual Pal just emailed me to write, “We can’t change social media (that would involve changing humanity) but I can decide how to employ it. Bottom line: strive to live a better quality of life in REAL LIFE. (<--No Duh)”, so I’ll end there.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741. (In the UK, that's 0800 689 5652)
Art
I made a few sketches this week, but nothing I’d bother sharing. I started a watercolor postcard this morning of the forsythia in my backyard, trying to figure out how to get the gold-yellow flowers against the background of trees and grey sky. Maybe I’ll share that with you next week, if it comes out okay. I thought of doing a postcard drawing of Ed Piskor, but Ho Che Anderson nailed it with that Instagram picture I posted above. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
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Postcardery
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Kickstartery
I have an idea for an art-book I want to make at the end of this year (it’s a year-long photo/text project), and I’d like to make it something more lasting than my ’zine format, so I may launch a Kickstarter for it this fall, and make it something I sell, rather than give away. If you’ve got ideas about what sort of rewards I should make for different tiers of donors — like, things you’d love to receive if you contributed, say, $50 to this project — let me know.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! Sorry it was what it was. I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & somatic craziness, and Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
I'm six foot one and I'm tons of fun and I dress to a tee,